20060328 1306 (HKT)

This is processed to keep as natural as possible, emphasis on surface detail and to merge prominence in a connected manner. A bit too soft to show all the delicate detail, but this should be more comfortable to look at.

20060328 1307 Finished merged

Reprocessed the surface detail without histogram stretch to minimize the effect of improper T-max tunning, merged with prominence.

A glimpse

This is not an observation at all... around 5:30a this morning, I looked out from my playing room window, saw Jupiter (should be?) outside, it's pretty low, but it's directly outside which I think my C8 can be used.... Let me see if I will have chance to test it out... the sky was already blue at that moment.

A full disc taken by Ranger

Using the expand technique of registax, quite boring today but I was amazed by the amount of subtle detail, 30 fps is so powerful! VRecord + Vdub post processing can attain full 30 fps!

DMK Urban deepsky

Fujinon 75mm f/1.8 at f/1.8, low to medium gain, 5s, 10 frames stacked, on LXD55.

Thin cloud moving around, 10s zero gain will saturate the whole frame.

Happy with the result, since it's done in urban area and I still have 25 more seconds to play in darker sky.

18/3/2006 Remote setup first light

The equipments are all ready, adapter tube shortened to reach focus easily. But I didn't do remote control this time, remote control still have some problems:

1. Locations: need to find a better location to host the mount/scope
2. Alignment: need to align and GOTO sun, remote focusing issues

But here's the result.

Penumbral eclipse

I watched until 5:57a until the moon was totally blocked/eclipsed by a nearby building.

Didn't notice anything special about the moon, since it's not yet in the deep part of the preumbra... but no choice, that's the best I can do inside my home.

The Borg 45ED is very great optically, better than my Ranger I should say, no chromatic abberation can be seen at all... I spent the time at my eyepiece (20mm widescan) for the last few minutes...tack sharp!

It can also capture the full moon disc with the toucam pro, why I was using it was because my 1394 cable is too short, but the coming hubs should solve the problem altogether.

some more frames to be processed, remotely tomorrow, hopefully.

some more test shots were made by the 75mm fujinon prime lens as well, a very good night...

as a new camera/scope testing night.

Some results:

Third failure night

This is probably the third consecutive failure nights (morning?!), I woke up, set the things up and finally got only fog... I just want to test wide field with Fujinon lens but so far still failed, not the camera nor the lens but the sky... fog will come it and kill everything just before I turn on the camera....

Coincidence...?

First DMK observation (not photography)

Set up the DMK to test again with the Fujinon 75mm f/1.8, pointed at Sirius and slew around, I found that many stars can be seen despite the super foggy sky, transparency is less than 1/10, I would rate. I can see 3-4 stars only despite Orion was hanging out there.

I estimated that it shows more than my 10x50 binocular just the same sky.

Exposure was 1s, 3s will saturate the whole screen, 0 gain.

Focusing is extremely easy, one can turn down the exposure setting to say 1/30s or even faster, that would allow 30 fps, and push the gain up. I found the gain of this DMK is so powerful that exposure can be reduced quite a lot by pushing up the gain, yet the noise level is still under very very well control. This is very very useful for focusing.

2-3s exposure will already reveal the need of tracking, I just used my Unistar for the quick test.

Under such sky, I attempted to locate M41, but failed. I suspect it was there, but it was just some more stars but never a cluster, so it was never confirmed.

Very promising I would say, if it can ever be done successfully, a wider lens should be acquired for milky way shots, and f/3.3 reducer should be seriously considered as well.

Processed image taken this morning

Alignment on the planet globe top is easier.

Morning Jupiter

It's fun just to setup the equipments, since I didn't do so for soooooo long...

After selling the GiroDrive, now can only stick with the LXD55, it performs quite well, but just the viewing angle is further limited.

Seeing was 1/10, nearly 50% of the frames cannot see the = on Jupiter, transparency should be rated at 5/10 at least by my eyes, but at f/32, it reaches over 50% gain, so... anyway.

GRS can be seen in the raw on and off for a few frames, overall appear in the processed imaged, Sky90 + 5x + color toucam pro.

Short observation 2nd of March 2006

Inside home, quite clear as it looked, sky was quite black, rare in Hong Kong, probably due to a cold front.

Setup my Ranger on Unistar Light, scan around using a Nagler 13mm, scan around Sirius but failed to locate M41, actually, it's suspected but the air was probably till too bad to reveal a cluster.

Used my Pentax 10x50 too, but failed as well. Long time no use this binoculars, couldn't focus at first since the right eye is adjusted out of normal... move it back and everything becomes normal.